For those of you who remember playing with the paintball guns of 15 years ago, you remember that they were not accurate, consistent, efficient or fast and often cost more than the basic guns of today. Over the next few years, the quality of mechanical paintball guns increased and over the past ten years or so, no major innovations have been made. In fact, the parts from Tippmanns and Spyders from 1998 are often interchangeable with their new guns today.

At about the time mechanical guns were leveling off, electro-pneumatic guns were invented. Electros quickly improved during the ensuing years, but for the last five years, no large technological improvements have been made. Prices have plummeted, but the guns of 2003 can still compete with the newest models.

Loaders can feed and guns can shoot faster than fingers can pull the trigger, so where is new innovation going to head within the paintball industry? Guns could be lighter and more efficient, but there's a physical limitation to how much metal can be removed from a gun and there's a minimum amount of compressed gas that's required to fire the gun. I'm convinced that we're really nearing the point where no major technological innovations are possible with the current compressed air/CO2 paintball gun design. For the last few years, all that the industry has done is made minor improvements and dropped prices as innovations have stagnated.

I can think of three areas where the paintball industry can still innovate, but all of them would mean that some major aspect of current paintball equipment must change. First, eliminating the air tank by compressing air in the gun - a prototype of a self-compressing gun appeared a few years ago but nothing has made it to market. Second, changing the power source away from compressed air or CO2 - Tippmann created the pump C-3 which used propane, but it's the only gun to not use air or CO2 that I'm aware of. Finally, manufacturers could design a gun that fired guns purely mechanically, whether it's with springs or something else.

While manufacturers will continue to produce new guns, unless something drastic changes, there will really be nothing "new" about them.